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The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relative classification accuracies of four land covers/uses in Kenya using spaceborne quad polarization radar from the Japanese ALOS PALSAR system and optical Landsat Thematic Mapper data. Supervised signature extraction and classification (maximum likelihood) was used to classify the different land covers/uses followed by an accuracy assessment. The original four band radar had an overall accuracy of 77%. Variance texture was the most useful of four measures examined and did improve overall accuracy to 80% and improved the producer's accuracy for urban by almost 25% over the original radar. Landsat provided a higher overall classification accuracy (86%) as compared to radar. The merger of Landsat with the radar texture did not increase overall accuracy but did improve the producer's accuracy for urban indicated some advantages for sensor integration. IntroductionAssessing many problems within environmental studies, economic planning, resource management, restoration projects and disaster preparedness requires a scientific analysis of data using processes available within the geospatial industry. With the launch of recent spaceborne radar systems, including RADARSAT-2, ALOS PALSAR and TerraSAR-X, the application and use of now operationally available quad polarization radar data for spatial information may prove beneficial for multiple situations. However, the potential of quad polarization radar data for land cover/use classification and other applications remains in its early stages as a result of previously limited data availability and analysis. Only with more examination of these relatively new spaceborne quad polarization data can the scientific and application community maximize the potential benefits of these technological innovations.Traditional means of providing reliable land cover/use information has been primarily undertaken by multispectral systems such as Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM). These systems, because of their limited functionality in cloud covered areas, are not able to fully sustain the demands for providing land cover/use information for many areas around the world. However, with the success of RADARSAT-1 and other spaceborne radar systems, this limitation has been addressed to a certain extent.

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